The Phony Campaign

2011-05-22 Update

Our candidate list is shaken up once again due to our
(arbitrary) inclusion criterion for GOP candidates: a 4%
probability or greater at
Intrade
for capturing the nomination. Today:

Mitch Daniels is gone; Intraders noticed that he announced his
decision not to run last night, and dropped him right down
to 0.2%. Pun Salad is officially disappointed,
because Pun Salad was officially impressed with
his reading list. (That's probably not the best way to choose
a candidate, but I can't think of a better one right now.)

Newt Gingrich dropped off the map (3.0%), almost certainly due to his
stupid answer about Paul Ryan's plans on Meet the Press
last week.

Michele Bachmann is back in at 5.4%. Intrade is still misspelling
her last name.

But in phony news, Mitt Rommney made a big move. (As did Scott Brown,
who Intrade still insists has a 7.7% of being nominated.):

According to a piece in Politico, LDS members are viewing Huntsman's
decision to place his national campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida
rather than on the shores of the Great Salt Lake with dismay. Even
worse, various opinions attributed to Huntsman about his Mormonism are
being interpreted as an effort to distance himself from his religion. At
a time when the LDS church has become a popular culture piñata with
HBO's recently concluded Big Love and Broadway's Book of
Mormon both
skewering the Saints, they have good reason to be sensitive about a
public figure that seems ashamed or uncertain about his identity.

TIME magazine calls Huntsman the GOP candidate that "Democrats
most fear". As if they'd know. But here's the sort of
thing
Tobin et. al. are
talking about:

And as for whether or not Huntsman still belongs to the Church of
Latter-day Saints, I know less than I did before I asked him. ("I'm a
very spiritual person," as opposed to a religious one, he says, "and
proud of my Mormon roots." Roots? That makes it sound as if you're not a
member anymore. Are you? "That's tough to define," he says. "There are
varying degrees. I come from a long line of saloon keepers and
proselytizers, and I draw from both sides.")

I think this means he has the proselytizing saloonkeeper vote sewn up.

True fact: browse over to the one-page website http://jonhuntsman.com/
and you'll find a copy of Huntsman's hand-written thank you
note to President Obama on his appointment to be ambassador
to China. ("You are a remarkable leader - and it has been a great
honor getting to know you.") There's a pretty border of pink hearts.

Via this Politico
story about "smear sites". (Which seems a little strong.)

John Nolte finds Sarah Palin to be a lot less phony
than the MSM narrative about her:

The idea is, at all costs, to undermine her seriousness and to create a
relentless storm of nonsensical controversies around her that serve the
leftist MSM's partisan desires in three ways. First, by creating a
narrative out of the ridiculous, the Governor is never allowed to get
her message out. Second, it furthers the goal of turning her into a
punchline. Finally, this Palin-Fury the MSM constantly brews up is meant
to condition us to wince every time she pops her head out of the ground.

John shows how this worked with Palin's reaction to Osama bin Fishfood's
recent demise.

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